[FC4] Thunderbird Inbox gone

[M. Lewis]

FedoraCore4
T'bird version 1.0.6-1.1.fc4 (20050720)

I've read numerous other postings about mail disappearing. I've searched 
the FAQ as well as the forum at the Thunderbird help. I've tried all the 
steps outlined in the 'mail disappearing' topic on the T'bird forum. 
Still I have no Inbox.

The scenario:

Today I needed to reboot my machine to install a new kernel. T'bird was 
working fine. I had about 70 or so emails in my inbox. Last night I was 
working on cleaning the inbox up and moving messages out of there.

Rebooted machine. Brought up T'bird. Went to the inbox folder and it was 
empty. Shutdown T'bird, started it again. Inbox is still empty.

If I go to my profile/ImapMail/ I cannot find any files or directories 
called Inbox. It apparently somehow magically was completely deleted.

I've sent messages to myself from other accounts. I can not receive mail 
now. I suspect the reason is the inbox is gone.

If I click on another folder in T'bird (other than Inbox) then click on 
Inbox again, I see in the bottom left of the screen "Opening Folder..." 
but of course nothing happens.

I'm very suspicious of some issue with IMAP, though Dovecot seems to be 
running fine. I set T'bird to check mail every 1 minute. If I do 'tail 
-f /var/log/maillog | grep imap' I DO NOT see T'bird logging in every 
minute. I see it only when I start T'bird.

If I send new message to myself, I can see it in /var/spool/mailboxname.

1) Any clues as to why this happened?
2) Any clues how to recover the messages that were in the Inbox?
3) Any clues how to prevent this from happening again? I suspect the 
answer to this is have very small Inbox. As I stated earlier, I was 
working on that last night. Guess I didn't get to it quickly enough.

I posted this on the Thunderbird help forum and I did get some answers 
from one fellow. Unfortunately, he was a M$ user and just gave me the 
standard spiel about things I had already tried.

Thanks for any ideas about how to proceed.

M